I was hoping to use Carrara because of it's intuitive interface to make my movie. But, I wanted to use a fast render engine. That is why I wanted to export to Maya, or 3dMax.
I also wanted to do some mocap work in Motionbuilder and some lipsync work in Softimage.

With Multi-pass rendering options, your render time may be further reduced.

As far as animation from motion builder,. you can export in BVH and load that into Carrara or Max.
If you're animating in Carrara, and want to transfer that to Motion builder or Max, then Fenric's BVH / PZ2 plugin will be essential for you.

I'm still not clear on What features you're exporting from carrara,. ...where you're having problems, and why you need to go through DS to get to Max,.

If you're exporting Daz3D or Poser figures from Carrara, then you may be wasting your time,...

Daz3D and Poser figures are supplied as OBJ Geometry,.. which Max can Open, rather than Import.
You can Open Daz3d/Poser figures from the Runtime/Geometry folder.

If you want to animate and work with Daz/Poser figures in Max,. take a look at PoserPro 2012,. which has a pipeline to work in Max

Mimic , and Mimic for Carrara, create lip-sync for Daz3d/Poser figures, and the Carrara version allows you to lip-sync your own models made in Carrara.
If you're making your own characters, then you're free to create your own Phonemes and Visemes for Mimic to use to create the lip-sync animation.

There are certain features in Carrara that I really like. I have a render farm and use it with Carrara but it still takes a considerable amount of time to render a scene. The other CGI software is moving toward GPU rendering. Which I am sure you know speeds the work up to near real time. I do not see any indication that DAZ is moving in that direction. I hope they do.

My original goal was to do my whole project in Carrara using modified stock characters.

I have motion capture and I find it much easier to work in Autocad products for that part of the work.

The lipsync feature in Softimage is very good and easy to use. I have used mimic and although it works I find myself doing a lot of tweaking. It is very time consuming.

The other thing that is very frustrating is the lack of documentation and the disorganized fashion DAZ3d presents their support materials for their products. I totally understand that Autocad has a different business model and DAZ3d has their own business strategy. I am fine with that, however it does get frustrating that DAZ does not have the same level as technical support for specific issues that may arise during the course of a project.

But, I still would love to be able to do everything in Carrara. I think the interface is much better than any of Autocad products. It is the workflow in and out and that lack of up to date documentation that drives me nuts.

I get what you're saying, and I have no issues with people using whatever software they want to use.
I used Max for at least ten years, from 3D Studio onto Max 8. and I use other 3D software,. not only Carrara.
So,... I'm not suggesting that you should only use carrara..

but,.. what I'm trying to help you with is,. getting what you want, out of Carrara, and into wherever you want to go.

So,..

Q: what is it exactly that you're having problems exporting .. ?
and
Q: why are you going through Studio to get to Max ?

For me,.. I've never had an issue in exporting any models from Carrara to Max,. and I've never had to go through DS

Bearing in mind that Carrara Rigging and weight mapping are completely different to Max's Biped and Physique, and if Max is what you're rendering in then it's probably best to re rig any models using those Max tools.

There is an old importer for Max Called PCharacter Import, which was designed to transfer Poser / Daz3D models and textures into Max,
it's old but it still works.
the other route is Poser Pro,.

I also use motion capture software, and have no real issues with opening any of the animation files in Poser, Carrara, DS, or Max

Some carrara features won't be supported, but have equivalents in Max, or can be made in Max

As for animation time per frame.

Have you tried reducing the complexity of your scenes,. for example,. creating the scene and animation,. then rendering out the Background, and the figures separately, and compositing the results..

I also use Octane GPU renderer,. but since materials need to be "Tweaked" in any render engine, it's another step which takes time to set up,. and there are still issues in Exporting sequential models to render animation frames, and although the image is being built up almost instantly,. it still takes some time to generate a quality image,.

There are plugins in development to allow DS and Carrara to access Octane.

There's no foolproof Lip-sync solution,. all of them need to be adjusted to some extent to get what you want or to correct any inconsistency in the Automatic creation stage.
Yes , this can be time consuming,. but everything takes time,. and if it's worth doing, it's worth taking the time to do it well.

DAZ does not have the same level as technical support for specific issues that may arise during the course of a project.

This is true, but if both companies charged the same fee for technical support, ....then it would be a level playing field, ..and a fair point,

There are a bunch of helpful, experienced users here who are willing to help for free. 24 / 7

As for the lack of Documentation,. the only parts that are missing are the new Bullet physics stuff,. and the reason that it's still missing is actually quite simple,.. It's not finished. ..

So,. in a way,.. it's like describing a Butterfly as,..
A small, long, green, tubular insect with multiple legs, which spends most of the time eating leaves.
Oh wait,.. that's a caterpillar,... ;)

Creating a Working Manual, or an updated addendum to the existing manual, and including the "Current" description of Bullet, would be a waste of time,. and a source of confusion later.
It's not even half way developed,.. once it's working and integrated fully, then the manual can be done relatively quickly,.

In the meantime,... here's my basic guide for Bullet, (which has been changed several times to keep up with changes)

I've also found reducing some settings can really reduce render times in Carrara and you still get nice results, especially with animations. Turning down filter size from 75% to zero (an old Sub7th suggestion) and maximum ray depth (depending on reflections) from 8 to 4 or even 2 can help.

Also playing with the tile size can speed things up. Smaller tile sizes for more intricate scenes (32) and bigger tile sizes for less complex scenes (128).

Carrara's FBX export can be problematic (not totally sure why it works on some things but not others), but you can fix those files sometimes by running them through Autodesk's free FBX utility.

Depending on what you're doing,. you can export objects you make in carrara,.. as OBJ models, and import those into DS.

Daz Studio has no way to support carrara features like particles, replicators, plants, hair, clouds,. etc,..

The same applies in reverse, to DS Specific features, or shaders in DS scenes. those won't load into carrara correctly, but usually Carrara has shaders or features which can do the same thing..

So, It depends on what you want to export and why.

..apologies for bringing this thread back to life.

OK I create a model in Carrara that I want to use in Daz. I can save it as a .obj to import into Daz Studio, however does it leave me with only an untextured unmapped mesh or are the UV maps saved? If not, is Carrara capable of UV unwrapping so I can create the necessary templates for texturing the model for use in Daz Studio or do I need another application for that?

I think Carrara Pro supports unwrapping and pinning and stuff. I'm pretty sure if you export an object you should be able to save the domains. There may be an option to check in the export dialogue. Ditto for saving textures. I seem to recall an option to bake procedural shaders to texture maps as well. I don't have direct experience with it myself. It's just stuff I've read about. There's a thread that Dartanbeck started within the last week or so about sending object files to DAZ Studio for clothes or props. You may wan to find it.

I guess that I just like modeling in Carrara. It's just fun being able to do it all right in the scene, in the assembly room. Makes it easy to build to just the right shapes and scales, etc., So that's why I've really been getting excited over how good Carrara is as a modeler. So, I haven't yet tried exporting OBJ using DS scaling presets. I always use Poser scaling presets so far - which means that just before exporting clothing from Carrara I scale uniformly to 1.042% in the Motion tab of the object.

So for clothes:
Model the object.
Assign material zones.
UV Map it. You may also unwrap.
Save the object or scene before going on - just in case.
Select the object and enter the motion tab.
Down in the scale settings at the bottom, select the 'uniform' box and type 1.042 into the while field (universal scale)
Export as Wavefront obj using the Poser scaling preset
Here you may make several choices for materials exports. You can even use procedural shaders (no texture maps) and export the obj, to turn (bake) the procedural settings into texture maps.

Then use the Poser scaling preset when importing the object into DS and all is well.
Did I forget anything?

Yeah... in tthe DAZ 3D Genesis Content Creation Articles, that I'm always linking to, you'll see that DAZ 3D takes UV Mapping very seriously. PA's are expected to provide templates of their models, and models' mapping is tested pretty deep during QA. It's cool when you get a seal of approval from QA.
They even have a downloadable checkerboard map for designing/testing your UV Maps with. I am certainly no expert in this field, but I have been known to get picky with model assets I've made. :)